Rabbi David Kaufman's thoughts on Israel and Current Events in the Jewish world.

Friday, January 9, 2015

Charlie Hebdo and The Jews - A Sermon for Shabbat Shemot

On Wednesday morning, three men, who are said
to have claimed connection to Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, also known as
Al Qaeda of Yemen, attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris,
killing a dozen people and injuring eight more. The four prominent political
cartoonists working for the controversial satirical magazine were all killed.
Among them was Georges Wolinski, a French Jew born in Tunisia in 1934 to a
Polish Jewish father and a Tunisian Jewish mother, whose family had come to
Tunis from Italy. After his father was murdered in 1936, he and his mother
moved to France where he became a political satirist and cartoonist.

Other victims of the terrorists included two
unarmed police officers on patrol to prevent attacks against the previously
attacked Charlie Hebdo offices. One of the officers executed by the terrorists
was Ahmed Merabet, a Muslim. In the attack, the perpetrators killed a
cross-section of France: Jews, Christians, Muslims, secularists, native born
and immigrants.

Much of what Charlie Hebdo printed on its pages
was offensive. It was not offensive in the way that National Lampoon or
Saturday Night Live might offend. It was offensive in the way that the old Totally Tasteless Jokes books,
for those who are familiar with them, could offend. It was offensive in the
South Park sort of way, from the social and political left, but with explicitly
graphic cartoons. Yes, Charlie Hebdo’s pages offended Muslims. They also
offended Jews, Christians, and just about anyone else whom the magazine’s
authors and cartoonists thought they could target.

The response to the massacre of the staff of
Charlie Hebdo has been significant.

The French Islamic
community, fearing a backlash because of this week’s attacks, has responded very
strongly. The French news service AFP
stated today that:

French imams condemned the violence committed in
the name of Islam during Friday prayers as the country reels from the double
hostage dramas that followed the massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine on
Wednesday.

The same message — distancing the country’s five
million Muslims from the jihadists responsible for the attacks — was relayed at
more than 2,300 mosques across France.

“We denounce the odious crimes committed by the
terrorists, whose criminal action endangers our willingness to live together,”
says the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur.

He also appeals to “all the Muslims of France”
to take part in demonstrations planned for Sunday to pay homage to the 12
victims of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, the bloodiest in France in more than
half a century.

Muslim theologian Tareq Oubrou, an imam in
Bordeaux, in the southwest, said Muslims were furious that their religion had
been “confiscated by crazies… and uneducated, unbalanced people”.

Numerous foreign leaders have said that they
will attend the huge rally in Paris set for Sunday.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and Spanish
Prime Minister Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose countries have suffered
major terror attacks in the past decade, were among the first to say they would
attend. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi
and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said they would also come.

President Obama stated today, “I want the people
of France to know that the United States stands with you today, stands with you
tomorrow,” and described France as America’s “oldest ally.” “We fight alongside
you to uphold values that we share,” the President said.

Most of us who have offered our support for the
value of free speech over the past few days would not also support the content
of that speech as offered by Charlie Hebdo. In fact, most of us would decry
much of it. Yet, we also must be concerned when the opportunity for us to
become offended by the views of others is silenced, when protests and criticism
that rattle us and disturb us are declared illegal or silenced by threat of
violence. That is the highway to oppression. The hangman may well come for
Charlie Hebdo first, but when the hangman comes, we know that there are others
on the list as well, including us- selected for what we believe, what we say,
how we look, where we're from... And in fact, in France this week, first they
came for free speech and then they came for the Jews.

This morning we awoke to the news that two new
people, Amedy Coulibaly and Hayat Boumeddienne, were wanted in connection with
the robbery of a gas station and murder of French police officer that occurred
yesterday. This afternoon, Amedy Coulibaly entered a Kosher Deli/Supermarket
with two AK-47s. He took nineteen hostage. Coulibaly called FBM-TV in Paris
this afternoon and stated that he chose the store because he was targeting
Jews. Furthermore, he claimed to be part of the Islamic State, stating that he
had orders from the Caliphate.

Four hostages eventually were killed along with
Coulibaly. Of the fifteen survivors, four were critically wounded. Meyer Habib,
a Jewish Member of Parliament in France, said that among the dead was his best
friend and that he knew two others who were also killed in the store.

No few synagogues around Paris chose not to
hold Shabbat services this evening and to close for the weekend out of fear:
not all of them, but no few of them. Many members of the Jewish community are
simply too afraid to go to Jewish places tonight. For the first time since
World War II, synagogues in France have shuttered their doors on Shabbat out of
fear.

While many proudly declare “Je suis Charlie!”
It will be interesting to see how many also declare “Je suis Juif!” What sort
of support will the Jewish community of France receive in the aftermath of this
attack, an attack that comes in a year following a dramatic upsurge of
Antisemitism in France complete with numerous attacks against synagogues, a
year that saw the highest emigration of French Jews to Israel in many years. It
is two years after an attack on a Jewish day school in Toulouse in which a
rabbi and three children were killed by terrorists. It is also merely months
after a Summer that saw mobs marching through the streets of France shouting
“Death to the Jews” and “Hitler was right.”

My friend Rabbi Audrey Korotkin pointed
out today in answering the question, “What has changed?” that it is simply
that the target of such violence and hatred is no longer just Jews. France did
not say, “Je suis Juif” then, nor did it the numerous other times when Jews
were attacked and killed as Jews, and it probably will not now. Charlie Hebdo,
the magazine filled with hate and derision, deserves love simply because the
French cherish freedom of speech. Do the French cherish the lives and freedom
of Jews? So far the answer seems to be silence.

Silence…a silence that
brings us to this week’s Torah portion.

The Israelites were fertile and prolific. They
multiplied and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them.
Then new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.

It has been four score
years since a great evil took hold in Europe. In August of 1934, Germany came
to have a Fuhrer. In September of
1935, it passed the Nuremberg Laws. We are of an age that has forgotten. It is
not the good Joseph that we have forgotten, but the opposite, the evil, how it
came to pass, how it grew and prospered. Europe has forgotten what allowing
hatred to flourish in its streets can produce. We are the king who forgot.

The Nazis spread fear and
hatred. They did not stand for enlightened modern values, but for contempt of
many of them. Those Muslims who support and encourage participation in Al
Qaeda, who seek the growth and spread of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,
who advocate for the ascension to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Arab
nations through violent means also seek to spread fear and hatred. They do not
support those values cherished in the west of Freedom of Speech and Religion or
many others advocated by majorities in western nations. Many of them have as goals
the completion of Hitler’s work in the genocide of the Jews and the domination
of the globe.

There are voices seeking to bring
change. My friend, Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy has spent much of the last three days being interviewed on national television. This is a link to one such appearance in Phoenix.Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi,
who took power by ousting the elected Muslim Brotherhood government, who
appears by all evidence to be a successor to Hosni Mubarak as a military
strongman, is also the one leader in the Muslim world who perhaps is positioned
to speak out in condemnation of religious radicals with whom he and his
government are at war.

“It’s inconceivable that the
thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma (multinational
community of Muslim believers) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and
destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible! That thinking – I am not
saying ‘religion’ but ‘thinking’ – that corpus of texts and ideas that we have
sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become
almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the
entire world!

Is it possible that 1.6 billion
[Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7
billion—so that they themselves may live? Impossible! … I say and repeat again
that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible
before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for
your next move… because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is
being lost – and it is being lost by our own hands.”

However, the attitudes of many Muslims remain steeped in an
ancient mindset that is anathema to the secular West, and the usual
rationalizations have diluted these so-called condemnations.

The implied argument is that the victims have in a sense
helped to bring the tragedy on themselves, because if they offend the
sentiments of over a billion people, there are bound to be some who will take
up arms.

In other words, this terrorist outrage deserves to be
condemned, but the West needs to understand that Islamic sensitivities need to
be respected; how can so many non-believers just not get it?

Yet, Westerners do get it.

It is just that they quite rightly repudiate it.

It may sound trite to say that freedom of expression is the cornerstone
of Western liberal democracy, but it is true. Mockery, satire, even blasphemy
form a part of this.

Of what use is the right to say only what everyone wants to
hear?

It is only in challenging many so-called sacred values that
the West has made progress towards formulating the best of societies where
rights are guaranteed — ironically, even the rights of religious people who
would deny those rights to others…

We are now faced with a sad and stark dichotomy where two
worlds, one that cherishes individual freedoms, the other that suppresses them
at every opportunity, are constantly pitted against each other.

The West must defend its liberties.

Cowering under Islamist intolerance would dilute some of the
most treasured aspects of its civilization.

First the Islamists came for the Jews. But the world
by and large did not speak out, because they were not Jews. Now the Islamists
have come for the satirists. Does the world stand by, because most of them are
not satirists? Do they think that the cartoonists of “Charlie Hebdo” are in a
different category, because they, like Zionists, were asking for it?

As Rabbi Korotkin essentially asks, “Is
Europe ready to confront a hangman that has come for the Jews and the
satirists?”

This year will almost certainly see a
dramatic increase in the number of Jews leaving France for safety in Israel.
Will it be a year that sees Europe care about that fact? Or be less than happy
about it if they do care? They will march, but will they only march? Will they
watch the hangman come, and even, in the words of Maurice Ogden, serve him
faithfully? Or will they, and we along with them, stand against him in public
square?

Our thoughts are with the people of France
tonight and with our Jewish brethren, once again facing both tragedy and
ongoing threats. May light and not darkness come into the City of Light tonight
and in the days and nights to come. May we support those who seek to bring
light into the darkness of hate-filled minds and be successful in our efforts.
May the prayers and songs for peace and comfort that we and Jews around the
world have offered tonight bring strength to our people everywhere.

Tonight, Nous Sommes Juifs Francais. We
are all French Jews. Chazak, Chazak, v’Nitchazeik, be strong, be strong, and
let us strengthen one another.